The Return Of Q- Stupid People Doing Stupid Things For Unbelievably Stupid Reasons
They're not just drinking the Kool-Aid, they're inhaling it
After an 18-month hiatus, however, a new message was posted on the anarchic online community, 8kun, last week. “Shall we play a game once more?” read the post. It was signed, “Q”. More messages followed. “Are you ready to serve your country again?” said one, followed by: “Remember your oath.”
Message boards and social networks lit up with feverish speculation at the meaning of Q’s return. When one follower asked about his long absence, Q replied: “It had to be done this way.”
In fact, Q never went away. A study earlier this year found that QAnon has gained support in the year since the Capitol riots. As the US approaches its midterm elections in November, dozens of candidates, most of them Republican, are running on QAnon-adjacent campaign platforms in primary races across America.
QAnon’s deranged, quasi-biblical rhetoric about Satanists and paedophiles harvesting children’s blood, and the call to arms to destroy them, have crept into the political mainstream.
As cults go, Q-Anon has an odd sort of staying power. It asks a lot of believers, but it constantly morphs and adapts as political conditions change, so followers never have reason to believe that Q is “wrong” or poorly informed. Q has never demanded worship, nor that his/her followers view him/her as a supreme being, so it’s not a “cult” in the traditional definition.
While some may have thought that Q might have disappeared or gone underground after the January 6th insurrection, he/she was laying low and plotting their next move. And it seems that Q is returning to an America more receptive than ever to his/her message.
New data from the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that the proportion of Americans who believe the main tenets of QAnon rose from 14 per cent in March 2021 to 18 per cent in March this year. Crucially, the proportion of people who dismiss the movement out-of-hand has softened sharply. In March last year, 40 per cent of Americans rejected QAnon’s beliefs completely — the figure is now 30 per cent.
Think about that for a moment. Almost one in five Americans believe in the central tenets of QAnon (Are we collectively that stupid? As if I even need to answer that.). It’s a conspiracy theory based mainly on “deranged, quasi-biblical rhetoric about Satanists and paedophiles harvesting children’s blood, and the call to arms to destroy them.”
It’s stupid on the surface, ignorant in practice, and ludicrous in its execution. Yet millions of Americans have fallen into the conspiracy theory and its ever-deepening web.
QAnon should be nonsensical to rational, lucid human beings. Yet, for some reason, good and decent people have disappeared down the rabbit hole and stayed there.
Because Donald Trump never conceded after the 2020 Presidential election and refused to leave the political stage, there are still people, elected Republicans among them, who consider Joe Biden an illegitimate President. That there’s no evidence to support this belief is of no concern to those firmly convinced that Joe Biden robbed Trump of what’s rightfully his.
QAnon exists to feed and validate this belief.
So, almost halfway into Biden’s term, a significant number of people still believe that the 2020 Presidential election was riddled with massive fraud- despite no evidence ever having been presented to substantiate this notion. These people believe what they believe, and no rational argument will change that belief.
You can see it in the “STOP THE STEAL!” signs in red states or the “FUCK JOE BIDEN!” signs I see in the back of truck windows (classy, eh?) even here in ultra-blue Portland.
Unsurprisingly, QAnon followers are far more likely to get their news and information from Far-Right media outlets. And not just Fox News Channel. They’re also heavy consumers of One America News, Newsmax, InfoWar, and in some cases, Stormfront and other White supremacist sites. These aren’t the sort of folks who include CNN and MSNBC in their media diet.
Republican candidates have also been quick to capitalize on the fear and distrust of the federal government that’s a hallmark of the QAnon movement.
With primary elections ahead of the midterms under way, a review of public records, social media posts and campaign materials by the website Grid found at least 78 candidates aligned with QAnon running for office in 26 states across the entire nation.
Some of these candidates sit firmly in the political fringes, but others are on the brink of high office. Doug Mastriano, a devout follower of Trump’s Make American Great Again (Maga) movement, who was at the Capitol on January 6 and recently spoke at a QAnon-affiliated conference, won the Republican nomination for the governor’s post in Pennsylvania. Mastriano is now one election away from running the biggest swing state in the US, with power over its election system at the next presidential race in 2024.
That the GOP is nominating QAnon followers, along with those involved in the January 6th insurrection, is distressing. One of our two major parties is fielding candidates whose commitment to the democratic process is suspect, at the very least. Their involvement in a cult should be a matter of grave concern. Not only is Doug Mastriano not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s also something of a thug, and he’s running to be the leader of one of this country’s largest states.
If Mastriano wins in November (an unlikely but not impossible scenario), QAnon may alter America’s political landscape in ways we can’t yet imagine. However, once they discover how to win elections, the cult may begin to make significant forays into elective politics. If successful, QAnon candidates could fundamentally change American democracy, and not for the better.
Are you ready for an America ruled by the lowest common denominator, a cult based on conspiracies rooted in stories of Satanists and pedophiles harvesting children's blood?
I’m certainly not…but that may be our future if we don’t start paying attention.
